The present invention relates generally to the field of aeronautics and more particularly to webbing systems for arresting the forward motion of a landing aircraft.
Aircraft barricades are normally used as emergency devices for arresting the forward motion of a landing aircraft in a limited amount of space. Such barricades, employed on both aircraft carrier decks and land runways, typically consist of expendable webbing assemblies fabricated of interconnected nylon straps which are stretched across the path of the incoming aircraft in various configurations and attached at either end to any energy absorbing device. These straps, sometimes referred to as webbing, generally comprise the barricade vertical members which serve to engage the leading edge of the aircraft wings thereby absorbing the force of the aircraft's forward motion. Preferably these vertical strap members have been movable laterally upon wing engagement to distribute loading along the wings as equally as possible.
Modern high-performance aircraft having their wings disposed at relatively large sweep-back angles have presented difficult problems to the effectiveness of such existing webbing barricades. Due to the substantial swept-back nature of the aircraft wings, the movable vertical strap members of the aforedescribed webbing barricades have been caused to slide outward along the wings immediately upon impact frequently resulting in complete disengagement of the aircraft. While other existing aircraft barricades having webbing loops for fuselage engagement may avoid the arrestment problems caused by the swept-back wings, such fuselage-engaging barricades have not been completely satisfactory in applying safe and equalized arresting loads to the aircraft.